Lessons learned the first 50 years

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I hit a milestone. I turned 50 years old. I am thankful that I don't feel 50.   I am thankful for things God has taught me throughout those 50 years. .  I have learned that God loves mercy and when I feel a sense that justice needs to happen over mercy, all I need to do is remember that I am thankful for when God gives me mercy instead of a just punishment.   (Micah 6:8 8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.) ( Luke 6: 36  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. ) I have learned that hurt people end up hurting people.   When I am able to see that I didn't hurt them but I am bearing the results of that persons hurt inflicted by other people, it helps me forgive whatever hurt they pushed onto me and move on.  (Romans 12 : 18  If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. )  I have learned that anyone who thinks they have God

Broken Cisterns

I have been working on a Bible study by Beth Moore called Breaking Free.  It is a Bible study similar to Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Lies Women Believe.  It is focused on using Scripture to combat the lies of our own minds or the lies of the enemy.  We are breaking free of bad habits, false beliefs, and bad attitudes.    I think I have completed most of Beth Moore's Bible Studies and she does an excellent job of helping you fall in  love with God's word.  She does an excellent job of showing you the power of His word to break strongholds.   Her studies are hard and require a lot of homework, but when you fall in love with His word, you don't mind that so much.


Yesterday she had us read a familiar story, the Samaritan woman at the well. John 4:1-18)/
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

What is the "water"?  It is the Holy Spirit.  John 7:37-39 37 On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”[c] 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Back to the woman at the well.... She was a woman of excess.  Excess of men... .and likely other things.  All excess is rooted in emptiness.  It is as if I say, Ï have something in that I just can't fill up"...    well, that is because that can only be filled by God.      Yet, we try.  We try to fill up on excess of :men, chocolate, church (yes...that can be a problem..think Pharisee), beauty, money,  work, the world wide web, children, stuff...etc

We might use those things and feel a false fullness but it won't last.  Water?  Water fills EVERY crack so there is no room for false "fill ups"...    There will be NO empty places if we let the Holy Spirit wash into our lives through belief in Jesus as Lord and Savior. 

The Old Testament so often mirrors the New Testament.  Look at this ... Jeremiah 2:13...
13 “My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

That is where we have to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5). That is  where we choose to dig into His word... Going to the Living Water... 

Immediately after meeting the woman at the well, Jesus said, 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”  
What was His food?   Time with His Father...     I want that for all of us.  
Hebrews 4:12 -For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

2 Timothy 3:16 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I want to be live out 2 Timothy 3:17... so I have to do what is required in 2 Timothy 3:16.  Join me...  Let's not use broken cisterns any more.

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